Living
by SiriuslyPadfoot'sGal
Summary: NOMINATED AT HE HAD IT COMING! Hermione Granger has been living life out of habit since the end of the war. On the war's anniversary, she decides to start living again. She signs up for an art class only to encounter someone she hasn't seen in years.


A/N: I know I should be focusing on Moments of Sanity…but this one-shot came to me…and what can I say…I couldn't resist.

Living

SPG

Three years. It had been three years to the day since the Great War had ended. Yet she remembered it like yesterday.

The feel of the barren earth still burned her heels.

The thick fog of the breeding dementors still clouded her vision.

The blood, seeming to fall like rain from the sky, still haunted her.

The sight of Ron's body, thrown carelessly in a pile with the rest casualties, still made her stomach seem to turn inside out.

Yet, the memory of Harry's broken laugh after it was all finished, made the fight worth it.

Three fucking years, she lived like the mourning woman she was. For three fucking years, she threw everything into her work. For three fucking years, She and Harry pretended like their lives weren't severely twisted and damaged. Three fucking years…was enough.

This morning she'd gotten up early and decided that it was time to start living again. Being one of the walking dead for the past three years, she wasn't really sure where to begin.

She began by getting up and stepping into the shower. She turned the water as hot as she could stand it, and then turned it even a little more. She hissed as the blistering water washed away the three years of idleness. Today was a new day.

Today, she wouldn't walk into her closet and wear something that still held Ron's distinct musky scent. Today, she wouldn't throw her hair into a messy ponytail, telling herself that it didn't matter what she looked like anyway. She wouldn't walk the streets with her head down and her pain hidden away deep in her chest.

She proceeded to spend more time than she ever had in her life fixing her hair and choosing her clothes. She even took the time to paint her toenails a dark rose color.

Finally, with more confidence than she'd had in decades, she grabbed the best purse she had and fled her apartment, her completely uncharacteristic, inconvenient, and uncomfortable shoes clicking against the sidewalk.

She had no idea how this process of "living" would begin. She decided that people were living all around her so maybe if she opened her eyes, she would know where to begin.

She walked a few blocks from her block until she was in a bustling part of town. The thump of music, the roar of cars, and the loud whisper of conversation pervaded her mind… and she loved it.

She'd forgotten how much she had missed the rest of the world. For the past three years, her life had revolved around the ministry, Harry, books…and pretending.

As she was passing a board with advertisements and flyers covering every spare inch, a plain white sheet surrounded by a sea of color caught her eye.

**Want to be more creative?**

**Want to let the artist in you run free?**

**Try an Art Class at London Metropolitan University…**

**Open to the Public!**

**Come to one class for free!**

**Life through Art**

That was it. She would do something that she had never done before. Art was something that couldn't be learned from a book. It had to be felt and interpreted from your own soul.

This was how she would begin. Life through art…she jotted down the address quickly and saw there was a class beginning in twenty minutes. She slipped her sunglasses onto her face and set off at a brisk pace.

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

"Hi. I saw a flyer about an Art class here." She ventured towards a woman sitting at a desk whose name tag read Elizabeth.

"You're just in time. Down the hallway, first door on your left."

"Thank you." Hermione smiled. She raised her chin in confidence and opened the door.

There weren't a great number of people in the room, but enough. About eight or nine students and a woman who looked a little older, whom Hermione guessed was the teacher.

She walked up to her and said, "Excuse me, mam?" The woman turned around and smiled softly.

"I saw a flier and on impulse decided to join your class." She said warmly.

"That's fantastic!" the woman cried, a thick English accent dominating her speech. "But I'm afraid that this isn't my class."

"I-it isn't?" Hermione's confidence faltered.

"It's mine."

Hermione turned around and was shocked to see a woman, who couldn't be much older than herself. Her hair was an edgy black cut in choppy layers that were longest in the front. She had a large tattoo that peeked out from her shirt and stretched across her sternum. Hermione couldn't really decipher what it was, but this girl, who seemed completely at ease with herself intimidated her slightly.

"Oh I'm sorry. Hi. I'm Hermione. On a whim I decided to try this class, but I'm afraid I don't have any supplies or anything."

"The name's Nell. Don't you worry your pretty little head a bit, lass." She didn't speak with much of an accent, but Hermione guessed that she was probably Scottish.

Before Hermione even realized, what was happening, her arms were full of supplies. She blinked a few times and then took an empty seat near the front.

"Now, ladies and gent…" she smiled at the one male in the class, "Today we will be doing a drawing of a live model. So grab your sketchbooks and a charcoal pencil."

There was rustle of paper and the clatter of people searching through their bags. Hermione situated her supplies and then looked back towards Nell.

"I was in a bit of a bind today, and a friend of mine volunteered to help me out by posing as our model. So he is a first-timer… don't be too vulture like, kay?" She laughed lightly and called, "Alright love, ready when you are."

Hermione was dating the top of her sketch paper when she heard a door click shut. Her eyes lifted from book and trailed up the body of the model.

She first let her eyes traced the lines of his feet and she noted with fascination the severe arch of his feet.

She immediately put her pencil to her paper and started with the arch. The arch of the model's foot was so high that she was sure the center of the foot didn't even touch the ground.

She worked her way to the heel that was pale and pure. There was a roughness around the edge and the skin seemed slightly dry.

Her lines extended up to the ankles that were thin in comparison to the large size of the feet. She transitioned next into the curve of the calf. The calves were toned and she struggled a little in showing the defined muscle. After a few minutes of shading, she decided that it was a close as she was going to get.

She had a great deal of difficulty with the knees; this was after all her first attempt at art. But she had an eye for detail and that helped.

After she fumbled her way through the drawing of the knees, she moved to the thighs. They were muscular just like the calves, but she was struck by the paleness of them. She could just barely see the glint of golden hairs.

As her eyes trailed upwards, the paleness was interrupted by deep, long scar. The scar stretched all the way from the inner thigh to the protrusion of the hip bone. She drew a vague sketch of the thighs, adding a few lines to accentuate the curve of the muscle, but spent the majority of her time detailing the scar.

With a slight blush rising on her cheeks, she moved to his penis. First she drew the angling of the narrow hips. She moved a bit higher and traced in the muscles that sat above his hips. After she finished the sketching and shading of the surrounding area, she tackled the penis itself.

It was dusted lightly with golden hairs around the base. Her blush darkened when she noticed that his member was not flaccid, but seemed to be hardening as time progressed.

Out of embarrassment, she finished that section of her drawing as quickly as possible. Just because she promised herself that she was going to start living, didn't mean that she was open and confident about sexuality.

She followed the trail of hair upwards toward the circle of his belly button. She drew the slight inward curve of his waist. She took her time shading in the muscles of his abs.

Nell certainly had gotten lucky when this friend volunteered to pose. He had the perfect body for art.

Her eyes flowed upward slowly over the arc of his pectoral muscles. Again, there was a light dusting of pale, golden hairs sprinkled across a broad chest. His nipples were a light pink and erect, probably from being uncovered for so long.

She spared a quick glance at her watch and realized she'd been here for nearly an hour and a half.

Only half the class remained sketching, it seemed the others had already left. She focused herself back on the sketching.

She started again with the hands that dangled calmly at his side. His fingernails were clean and impeccably filed. There was a callus on his left thumb, and a scar across the palm of the same hand.

His forearms were toned and she couldn't detect even a hint of hair on them. On the underside of the left forearm was a large scar, that looked like it was probably from a burn. It stretched from the base of the wrist to right below the elbow.

She outlined the muscles of his biceps and took her time with the curve of his shoulders.

She drew the slight bow of muscle from the shoulders to the neck. She gradually connected the curve of the collar bone to the muscles of the shoulder.

The neck was slender and rather easy to draw and curved magnificently into a sharp jaw line. She spent a few minutes shading to enhance the sharpness of the jaw before she moved up to the equally pointed features of the nose and cheekbones. His lips were a natural pink, thin, and set in a straight line.

The facial features took a bit longer than the rest of the body because detail was so much more important.

Finally, with a tired sigh she moved to the thing she had been looking forward to drawing most—the eyes.

When her eyes moved upwards, they met a unique set of stormy grey eyes. Her initial desire was to begin sketching furiously in an attempt to capture the uniqueness of these eyes… but she couldn't. Why?

Because these eyes, regardless of their uniqueness, were _familiar._

For the first time since the model entered the room, Hermione zoomed out of her detailed focus and took in the full sight of the model, who was staring directly back at her.

There in complete and utter nudity, stood Draco fucking Malfoy

Her jaw dropped and her entire face was flushed a vivid red. Her immediate reaction was to run. Her hands itched to pack up all her things and flee, but he seemed to issue a challenge with his eyes.

A flicker of determination welled in her chest, and it was just enough to keep her going. She mustered all the resolve she could and focused again on her sketching. She did her best to sketch the rest of his face with as much detail as she had before she realized his identity. But her anxiety slightly sped up the process.

She looked around and realized that there were now only three people in the classroom.

Nell was at the rear of the classroom, with her back to them, ruffling through some drawers.

She was obviously mortified in her chair.

And Draco Malfoy was at the front of the classroom smirking at her.

Ducking her head she grabbed her things and raced from the classroom without so much as a goodbye to Nell.

**OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO**

By the time she'd gotten three or four blocks away, her breathing slowed and she covered her eyes with her hand as she collapsed against a brick wall.

She felt like screaming. This would only happen to her. It figures on her first day of trying to move on, she would run into her long-time enemy.

With a bitterness forming in her mouth, she remembered the large burn on his forearm, she should have realized it then, but she'd been too absorbed.

She remembered well the day he pledged his allegiance to The Order. He'd shown up with secret documents, stolen from his father. But the most striking thing had been his attempt to remove Voldemort's mark from his arm. There was evidence of a great amount of blood, almost as though he'd attempted to skin it off. But when that hadn't worked, he had attempted to burn it off. His arm was blistered and bloody.

She shook her head to rid herself of the thoughts. She told herself that it wasn't a big deal. It wasn't as though they were exactly enemies anymore. They had, after all, ended up fighting on the same side. They had even been sent on several missions together for the order. At times she even found herself comfortable in his presence. There witty banter helped to take a bit of edge off of the seriousness of the situations around them.

She took a deep breath and prepared herself to leave the sanctuary of the wall she leaned on. She pushed off and made to begin her walk back home when an arm wrapped quickly around her waist and pulled her around the corner into an alley.

Her back met the brick wall and she let out a small gasp.

Her eyes opened and that familiarity was there again.

She cleared her throat boldly, "Draco."

He quirked an eyebrow and offered, "Hermione."

Minutes passed as she stood there pushed against a wall with one of his arms still around her waist and the other propped perpendicular to the wall.

Silence was the only thing that passed between them.

"It's been a while. You look good." He said lightly as he slowly unwrapped his arm from her waist.

A blush spread across her cheeks as she offered honestly, "So do you."

He let out a bark of a laugh, and something loosened in her chest. It was starting again… Him. Her. Together…comfortable.

"You've made this quite a day for me, you know. Immense embarrassment and sheer terror as you practically kidnapped me. It's charming really." She laughed.

"Well. I try." A smile spread across his features and something in her chest tightened…but this was different. It wasn't like the fear she felt before.

He started talking and she was vaguely aware that it was about his amusement of seeing her in the art class and obviously noticing her far before she noticed him, but she wasn't listening.

She watched his lips moving for a few seconds before she placed her hand gently on the sharp jaw line that she just finished drawing.

"Hermione?" He questioned, "What are you doing?"

"Living." She breathed before pushing her lips against his.

He stood still for a few moments, but as she grew bolder and pulled him closer, he joined her.

Their mouths opened and tongues clashed fiercely as he rewrapped his hand around her waist.

Her back was pressed further into the wall as he sought to rid every ounce of space from between them. His other hand slid from the curve of her waist, down her hip to rest on her thigh.

With one tug, he wrapped her leg around his waist as he nipped and kissed his way to the juncture of her neck and shoulder. She could feel his hardness pressing into her inner thigh and she whimpered.

"My place?" she asked between staggering breaths.

He raised his head and his hand took the place of his lips, softly rubbing and soothing the bite marks he had left.

"It is only fair, "he smirked, " You already saw me naked. Now it's my turn. "


End file.
